Quin­ton Ny­athi doesn’t have a leg to stand on when Jes­sica de­mands cus­tody of their son.

If you bring up what a dis­as­trous year 2016 has been, no one’s go­ing to be nod­ding harder than Quin­ton (Brighton Ngoma). “Ev­ery time we talk, he’s in a state of com­plete dev­as­ta­tion and he’s been be­trayed by ab­so­lutely every­one in his life,” laughs Brighton. “It’s just frus­tra­tion, and ‘why me’ and blam­ing the world.” Shortly after Quin­ton hit a des­per­ately low point and fell into bed with his cousin Mangi’s (Kag­iso Modupe) wife Din­tle (Ma­paseka Koe­tle) in July this year, he crashed while driv­ing drunk with his young son Beyon (Cayde Molokoane) in the car. That shock­ing in­ci­dent kicked Quin­ton back onto the wob­bly path to so­bri­ety and he even wres­tled back con­trol of his com­pany NFH from his mother Layla (Natasha Suther­land) on Tues­day 4 Oc­to­ber. But change may come too lit­tle, too late when Beyon’s mom Jes­sica (Melissa Al­li­son) starts pur­su­ing full cus­tody of their son on Mon­day 31 Oc­to­ber…

NOT WITH MY SON

There’s no way that Quin­ton is go­ing to just al­low Jes­sica to move over­seas and take Beyon with. He tells Jes­sica’s new boyfriend Dennis (Charl­ton Brown) on Tues­day 1 Novem­ber that she can leave with his bless­ing – but not with their son. “It’s an emo­tional re­sponse ini­tially, it’s an ‘over my dead body’ sit­u­a­tion,” ex­plains Brighton. As a child aban­doned by his own fa­ther, it means ab­so­lutely ev­ery­thing to Quin­ton to be the kind of dad he never had. “See­ing your son be happy with an­other man, like this new boyfriend of Jes­sica’s, I think any­body would feel deep down like they had failed. There’s a mo­ment where Quin­ton says, ‘A boy needs his fa­ther,’ in ref­er­ence to Beyon and Beyon leav­ing for the United States with Jes­sica. Ul­ti­mately he’s talk­ing about him­self,” adds Brighton.

MOM ON MY SIDE

Quin­ton has one sur­pris­ing ally in his cause to keep Beyon – Layla. But Layla is sup­port­ing her son. things are still de­cid­edly frosty on Quin­ton’s side fol­low­ing his dis­cov­ery of her se­cret part­ner­ship with Lu­cas Ny­athi (Sello Maake Ka-Ncube) and his girl­friend Naledi’s (Di­neo Moeketsi) hu­mil­i­at­ing at­tempt at a mother-son rec­on­cil­i­a­tion din­ner on Mon­day 17 Oc­to­ber. “It’s al­ways a bit of a ping pong sit­u­a­tion with him and his mom,” ex­plains Brighton. “In the be­gin­ning it’s like, ‘Don’t talk to me and don’t give me parental ad­vice. You’re the last per­son on Earth to give me ad­vice on par­ent­ing.’ But even­tu­ally he lis­tens and they get closer.”

PULLING THE THREAD

When Layla finds out on Mon­day 7 Novem­ber that Mangi lied to pro­tect Quin­ton after the car crash and that Quin­ton was driv­ing drunk with Beyon, Scan­dal! fans will know that it’s just a mat­ter of time be­fore Jes­sica beats that nail into the cof­fin of Quin­ton’s cus­tody suit. Be­cause, let’s face it, it’s not just that one in­ci­dent. In Jan­uary this year, Quin­ton found out that his wife Them­beka (Masasa Mban­geni) had de­lib­er­ately hid the fact that Jes­sica’s baby Beyon is his son. Then in Fe­bru­ary, Them­beka went on trial for mur­der, and in May, Quin­ton re­alised to his hor­ror that not only had Them­beka drugged him on their wed­ding night in May 2015 so that she could hide the corpse of her mur­der vic­tim, she was also fak­ing her preg­nancy.

All the drama sent Quin­ton into a down­ward spi­ral of reck­less drink­ing and drug abuse in June 2016. “He acted out by do­ing drugs and go­ing out with var­i­ous girls. Go­ing to Ibiza when he was sup­posed to be go­ing on some busi­ness trip, do­ing drugs on a plane, ODing and end­ing up in hospi­tal (which cost him his job as CEO of NFH in July)… Jes­sica some­how finds out about all of that,” says Brighton.

CAN QUIN­TON LET GO?

And once Jes­sica finds out, the bat­tle is re­ally go­ing to be be­tween Quin­ton’s pride and his abil­ity to let go and al­low his son to be happy with­out him. It looks like 2016’s reign of ter­ror isn’t over for Quin­ton Ny­athi just yet.